Abhinav Bindra: Aiming For a Perfect Swansong

So tough is the 10m Air Rifle competition at the Olympics, that no shooter in history has managed to win the gold medal twice. India's Abhinav Bindra, who became Olympic champion eight years ago is Beijing, is attempting the seemingly impossible. The Rio Olympics is going to be his last competition.

Bindra's has been a career that has spanned well over a decade. At the 1998 Commonwealth Games, he became the youngest participant at the competition. In the following four editions of the Games (2002, 2006, 2010, 2014), he picked up gold medals. At the 2006 World Championships in Zagreb, he won gold. And followed that up with a historic Olympic gold two years later in Beijing.

Over the last couple of years, the ace marksman has mulled retirement a couple of times. After the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, he mentioned he would become a 'hobby' shooter. But Rio 2016 is indeed going to be Bindra's swansong. The 33-year-old has hence left no stone unturned in his preparations, which includes replicating the shooting range in Rio at his home in Chandigarh.

Bindra, who will also be the India's flagbearer at the opening ceremony on August 5, is one of the four goodwill ambassadors alongside Bollywood superstar Salman Khan, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar and music maestro AR Rahman.

A biopic on the champion's life is in the pipeline. Irrespective of how it does on screen, a medal winning finish to Bindra's career will make it a real life blockbuster no doubt.